The Ninety Three Pieces Of His Heart
by RoseScor90
Summary: The life and love of James Sirius Potter. Was it because he was named after his grandfather, or was the Potter line infested with Unrequited Love in general? Do R&R! Rated T for language!


Disclaimer: Not JK…

A/n: Written for Mystii's Those Weasley Girls: A Next Gen Challenge. The prompts she gave me where:

Song: Dog Days are Over By: Florence + the Machine

Quote: Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. ~Albert Einstein

Line:_ She's batting her eyelashes at those boys as if they were nothing, as if they were powerless. James Potter was one of those boys- and he hated feeling powerless like the way she made him._

And the pairing was James(II)/OC.

Hope you enjoy!

He wasn't her friend, he wasn't her _boyfriend_ either; James Potter did not know what he meant to Anne Merryweather. He knew he was being pathetic and oddly felt like a whining child, but who could help him? He was in _love._ Heart wrenching, earth shattering, heartrending _affection_. The question that kept rising in his head was why; why did he have to go and fall in love with the most elusive, the most infamous woman in the entire Auror Department?

_Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love_ a muggle's quote that he had heard Rose say often ran through his mind. He hadn't understood what it had meant but then, neither had he expected to be head over heels for a woman who was neither a redhead nor hot headed.

"Hey James." She greeted him as she took the seat beside him; it was her usual place in the class. James had been surprised when she had taken a seat near the front; he had thought she'd much prefer the last benches. And she was shockingly quick witted for all the never care attitude she put up.

"Anne." He greeted back, turning to the scroll of parchment in front. There was still a lot of time for classes to begin so he tried to immerse himself in the lesson they were to learn that day; stealth. But how was he to concentrate with the bloody _love of his life_ sitting beside him, engaged in entertaining the entire class with her actions? Hearing her lilting laugh, James looked up to see what she was doing. She was flirting with their classmates; nothing new. She was batting her eyelashes at all those boys as if they were nothing, as if they were powerless. He was one of those boys- and he hated feeling powerless like the way she made him.

Closing the parchment with a sigh, he thrust it into his book bag; he was getting nowhere with the subject anyway. He turned to Anne, watching her as she led the guys on like she was honestly interested in them; James chuckled, he knew better.

Two years with her had taught him one important lesson; Anne never cared about any of the boys she dated, or flirted with. She acted like she did, and it was easy to believe the clear blue and seemingly innocent eyes when they looked at a person with that imploring expression on her face.

James had sat in the background, watching her go through men after men after men, dating and discarding them as if they were dresses in her closet; like her life was a trial room. Things had gotten complicated when one of her flings had ended badly; she really should have known better than to date the ringleader of a gang of bullies.

James had had to step in to save her from certain disaster. The guy had stepped away as soon as he had known that James, _James Potter_ was backing her up. James had, for once, been happy that he was a Potter. She had taken to sitting beside him in classes from that. James had originally thought it had been because she had been still wary but even after months had passed, the routine continued; not that he was complaining. And then she began spending lunch hours with him, and then dinner and then breakfast and…it was almost as if she wanted to be constantly in his company; except for the times she disappeared off to he-knew-where.

He should have been jubilant, over the moon but the fact was, he knew she wasn't doing it consciously. She was just looking for a back up. A person who'd wait for her, someone she could come back to after one of her mishaps. She needed a guard and he was just that, nothing more and nothing less.

"Jamie?" He looked away from where he had been staring at the window; they were seated in his room, trying to figure out the answers for the assignments they had been set that day.

"Huh?"

"I'm glad you found the answer, but let me see it." She took the book away from him, reading the answer written on it.

"This is not the answer, James!" She gave him the book back, but James didn't notice.

_This is not the answer_ the lines rang in his mind over and over, as if it was a mythical chant.

XXXXXXXX

Anne looked at him from half open eyes, noticing that he seemed out of it today; he had been like that for almost a week now and she was getting worried. Was he getting tired of her too? The thought clenched her heart painfully, _not again_.

Anne Merryweather; she had often chuckled at her own surname, which was completely contrary to her life. Misery, gloom, sorrow, angst and a little bit of unflattering drama; that was her life in short. Anne couldn't remember a time before she had joined the Auror Academy when she had laughed as much as she did with James; indeed, before she had come to know James Potter she hadn't known what laughter was either.

James, laughter, happiness; the three went hand in hand, it was rather a pity that she was deathly afraid of the first. Yes, she was afraid of James; of his love. Oh she knew he loved her, she wasn't blind. She would have felt blissful, she liked him too, you know? More so that he could ever imagine but of course, things weren't that simple.

People thought she was a slut, Anne did not flinch at the name; it was the truth afterall. But everybody had a reason for being the way they were, didn't they?

Her life wasn't any different from a normal person's. She had had a dysfunctional family; there had never been a day when she had seen either of her parents smile, maybe why she had never known how to herself. Then there had been her brother the bully. She had read that elder brothers were over protective and affectionate; oh how she had longed for her brother to atleast _look_ at her as more than a punching bag. In his defense, he had had very bad examples to learn from.

Anne sighed as she thought of her brother who was now in Azkaban; nobody in the world knew this, except James. She had once gone to meet him and had come back crying and James had noticed. She hadn't wanted to confess to him, that was just begging for him to get close to her and she didn't want that, did she? But James could be very persistent when he wanted to and with sobs and hiccups, she had narrated to him the story of her family, only just managing to leave the part about her school.

She had heard many people, even James, speak of his school days with ardor. Each time, she had seen his hazel eyes light up with that far away longing look as he spoke of the large castle and its varied peculiarities. Each time, she wished she had been accepted at Hogwarts rather than Beauxbatons.

Her school days hadn't been bad; primarily. She'd just had no friends, nobody who she could depend on. Thinking back, Anne wondered if it had been because she had had the same trust problem back then too; maybe she had been afraid even back then to let people into her life. She hadn't been excellent at anything and the professors had had nothing but a mere 'She does well in her classes and listens well' to say about her. In short, she had been a nobody.

When she had learnt of the Auror program, it had attracted her immediately because, bullied and ill treated as she had been from her childhood, the chance to defend herself in all ways was like a dream come true. She had worked herself to the end of the world to get her position here. Only to want to run back to the end of the world because of this guy seated before her whose eyes were overflowing with the love he held for her. _Didn't he see?_ She didn't deserve it; she wasn't worth him.

"James?" She placed a hand on his stationary one to stop him from making a hole on the parchment; the ink had already blotted the parchment.

"Anne?" He raised his calm eyes to her; she had to admit that he was excellent at hiding his emotions when he wanted to.

"Something's bothering you." He chuckled wryly and she saw a hint of anger in his eyes before it was wiped off.

"Yes, so what?" His voice was biting and Anne removed her hand from him as if she had been burnt with a red hot iron. He noticed the gesture and the mask broke, his face expressing anguish such as she had never seen; not even on her face after she had been beaten up by her brother.

"If there's anything I could do to…" He raised a hand and she stopped talking; she knew, she knew he knew and he knew she knew. There really was no need for them to speak at all, but James did anyway.

"There's nothing you can do that could solve this except…" He left the sentence hanging, sighing. He shook his head in resignation, turning back to the by now spoiled parchment.

"Tergeo" The ink on the parchment was siphoned off, but she felt like it was running down her throat, like burning acid, of fear.

"Except?" Her voice shook with the amount of emotions in them, but for all her agitation, his answer was perfectly calm.

"Stay away from me." A single hurt gasp was the only sound in the room, it echoed again and again, as if the very walls couldn't believe he was uttering these words.

It was followed by the sound of rustling papers and a final slam of the door to his room; James didn't hear the sound, his heart was making too much of a racket shattering into pieces.

XXXXXXXX

She had taken to sitting with _those guys_ now; her flirting was at its peak, it was getting progressively worse. But James did not care about her rising infamy; he was too immersed in his self created hell.

It had all been his fault, he knew that. But she hadn't even protested, she had just up and left, as if she had been waiting for him to say those words. A painful void had formed in his heart, trembling with agony everytime his eyes came across her form, or when he sensed her looking at him.

From the other side of the classroom, Anne watched as James withdrew into himself; the ever present lopsided smile was long gone, his eyes had sunken into their sockets, no longer shining with mischief.

_She missed him_, Anne realized with a pang. She had never missed anyone before; it was an alien feeling, one that she wished would go away so that she could go back to her stony, dull life. They were going to face their final exams in a month's time and she realized that they had drifted apart too much. She couldn't go to his room like it was the most natural thing in the world anymore, it felt awkward and unnatural. She had made her mind up to go talk to him a thousand times in the past weeks but her cowardice always won out. That was all she was, wasn't it? A pathetic untrustworthy coward. Anne wondered why James had liked her at all.

Exactly four weeks before their exams were scheduled, Anne walked into the gallery like classroom to a touching sight. James was slumped on the table, his things lying around him in a mess. _He must have fallen asleep studying_ she realized, seeing that a roll of parchment was serving as his unwilling pillow. Coming to a decision, Anne walked to the table that she had once shared with him and began gathering his stuff to put them in his bag.

She took his bag from where it was lying on the floor to dump the contents inside, when she noticed the numerous scrunched bits of parchment lying inside. Curious, she took one out, thinking it must have been a discarded assignment. There were only two sentences written on the bit of paper, but it caught her throat, making her choke on tears.

_I didn't mean it; I love you_

_That isn't the answer, I know._

Anne hurried to check the rest of the mess, they were all the same. Ninety three in total, one for each day they had been apart; Anne didn't care to know how she knew the count. She stood unmoving beside the table where he slept, staring at the bunch of what appeared to be useless parchment; they were dearer to her than life. It was only when a drop of tear fell on it did she realize that she was crying, but she did no move to stop it.

She lifted her hand to wake James but stopped herself as she heard footsteps outside the classroom. Hurrying to hide the rest of his things into the bag, Anne walked over to her seat, taking the bundle of papers with her.

XXXXXXXX

James threw the mattress of his bed upside down, looking under it to see if he could find one atleast _one_ of the pieces. Finding none, he put his bed back to its original position, slumping down on it. He hid his face in his hands as he tried to recall what he had done with the bundles of parchment. He surely hadn't thrown it away, had someone else noticed the bunched of used papers and thrown them away?

"What happened here?" Anne's surprised voice dragged him back from his alarm, and he lifted his face, only then noticing the mess his room was. A dragon raging through would have made a lesser mess. She waved her wand once, putting all the things in their right places. She looked at him with questioning eyes and James hurried to explain.

"I was just…" His mind went suddenly blank, looking at the object in her hands.

"…looking for this?" She walked into the room, up to his bed, and placed the bundle carefully in his extended arms. He took the bundle carefully, placing it under his pillow where it would stay safe and away from prying eyes.

He didn't know how they came to be in Anne's hands, and he didn't dare look up at her to ask her either. She must have read them, the apology letters he had stupidly written and discarded as worthless. It had been a thoughtless act, writing up bundles of parchment with the same words and stuffing them into his book bag; someone was bound to find out sometime. James wondered who else knew. Anne sat beside him on the dusty bed, placing a hand on his shoulder so that he wouldn't walk away.

"What is this, James?" Her voice sounded close to his ear, muddling his already confused brain. He shook his head to clear it, standing up to walk to the window. The sight outside, though created artificially, was soothing and James embraced it.

He jumped as her hand came to his arm and turned him around. She was looking at him with curiosity and anxiety all rolled in one and James looked away, unable to face the questions in her eyes.

"Why do you want to know? It's going to make absolutely no difference why I did…whatever I did." He shrugged helplessly.

"You wrote me letters. Ninety three of them; it does matter. Why?" She muttered as she walked away, back to the bed. She lifted the pillow to take the stacks from under them and brought them to him.

"Why James? Why couldn't you just tell me what you've been able to write _ninety three_ damn times? You couldn't even tell me _once?"_ Her tone was accusing and pleading all in one as she threw the bundle away, as if she despised it with all of her being.

"I'm a coward, Anne. You know that better than anyone else." She laughed lightly, irritating him. She thought his agony was _funny_?

"An Auror in training, first in the class, a coward. Pardon me if I don't find that hilarious," James couldn't discern if she was laughing or fuming; her eyes were showing both as she said finally, "I need the truth, James. We have had fights before. Why was this any different? Why couldn't you just come up to me and say sorry? Wouldn't it have saved us a lot of this separation?"

"Why should I say sorry when I knew it wasn't going to solve anything? My feelings haven't changed. I tried, believe me I did, but nothing works when it's…it's you. I can't seem to stop myself from liking you; it's like an automatic reaction. How do you expect us to be friends when one of us keeps wishing we were something more?" James felt an odd weight life off his shoulder as the words poured out of him. His posture slumped, the fierceness that had made him rage on until now fading.

"Its better we aren't friends, Anne, as long as I have this insane emotional outbursts; as long as I don't move on." He turned away to the window again, unable to say such harsh words to her face.

"And when will you move on, James?" Anne sounded oddly affronted, confusing him. He turned back to find her staring at him with a raised eyebrow, as if challenging him to go ahead with his words.

"When I leave this world, I hope." He uttered the words in a whisper, as if he was confessing to a crime. Silence reigned in the room after that and James was getting restless. He looked at her once and found her staring at him with an indecipherable expression in her eyes. There was neither happiness, nor sorrow, nor anger. The big blue eyes just…looked at him, like she was measuring him up, like it was the first time she was looking at him. Fed up, James turned in the direction of the door, intent on taking a long walk to clear his head.

"What if we both want the same thing, Jamie?" Her mouth whispered, and he almost didn't hear it. Stopping at the door, he said.

"I know we don't, Anne. Don't try to convince me, please, you'll only end up hurting me even more."

"What do you want me to do?"

"I told you that the other day."

"You didn't mean it. I _know_ you didn't."

"Maybe…" James remained silent; Anne almost thought he would walk out when he said, "I'll give you two choices, Anne. Either you can accept that we can't be friends and the both of us can remain peaceful, separately. Or, if you insist on being my friend, you can stay beside me, putting me under constant pain." James took a step to walk out the room when she asked.

"What if there is an option three?"

"You know there isn't, Anne." Anne shook her head in disbelief; James was bright and intelligent but sometimes, he could be the dullest person in the world. The thought made her chuckle, making James turn around in fury.

"What's so damn funny, Anne?"

"You." She smiled as she walked towards him, a knowing look in her eyes.

"What's so hilarious about me that you feel like laughing when I…" James words were cut off as she hugged him. She whispered in his ear, "You're so oblivious."

James didn't reply for a few minutes and when he did, his question made her laugh again.

"You're going to disappear in a few minutes and I'm going to wake up."

"Do you always yell at me like that in your dreams?" Even James had to smile at that.

"No," He admitted abashedly, his usual crooked grin gracing his face, "But even you have to admit this is all a bit too sudden. I'm still not able to believe it. It seems so surreal."

"All those mean the same thing, Jamie and no, you aren't dreaming. I am certifiably solid and I do love you, though you won't believe it."

"It's not that I won't, I just can't. I mean, look at the past…" James let the explanation go; he did not want to hurt her even more.

"You don't have to hold the truth back, James. You were quite justified in your fears. I mean, I didn't have the cleanest of slates around; add that to my past history and you have a perfectly good reason to avoid me."

"It doesn't matter to me, you know that. The only thing I was afraid of was that I'd be just another of your…"

"I think flings surmise them quite well. But you should have known, James. I'd never play with you the way I used those people; I cared too much. More than I could bear; so much that I was deathly afraid I'd blurt it out. Why else do you think I flirted so much in your presence? I thought that it was my antidote to you, but I couldn't stay away from you either…"

"You don't have to." She nodded her head in agreement.

"Never again. Never ever again am I letting you get away from me." He drew her close to him. Her one last doubt, the one last hindrance she had built up against her happiness, melted away with his words.

_All those days, those days when she didn't know love, were over. Here was love, and she wasn't going to run away._

A/n: Do review!


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